The Crystalline Existence

I still remember who I was before all this happened. But I am not sure who I became. Someone or something, suspended between myth and reality. But is there meaning to anything if you live forever?

Or at least, if you're destined to live in a cold laboratory until the ends of time, your body used as pincushion of devices you've never seen. 

I volunteered because I thought I have nothing else to lose, and I never thought it would be possible and they are doomed to fail anyway. 

This whole thing to me was just another fabula from mythology class that nobody actually believed in. But I saw it with my own two eyes. I was there when they went through with it. They used me to succeed, to be exact. 

The prophecy turned out to be true. 

The signs were there in the annals of time, but no one took them seriously. We've been warned, though. So we only can blame ourselves for our fate.

Ignorance.

Humanity knew since the beginning that they play with fire when they pretend to be God and try to change the order of nature. It was written in all the scriptures but they didn't listen to them. If it's all a tell-tale, then the consequences can't be true either, can they? 

But it all turned out to be fact. It's a whole new science now. So naturally, the consequences have to be real, too. But we love to play ostrich, and bury our heads in the sand. It's just human nature. If we can't see it, it doesn't exist, does it? 

Well it does. And I am the one paying the price for it. 

The process was simple. The government was looking for volunteers for their new health and life extending research. To even apply one had to be in the final stadium of any type of cancer. They were looking for people who had nothing left to lose. People who'd be dead soon either ways. 

The other criteria was to literally have nothing left to lose. No family, no lovers, no friends, not even a neighbor taking care of your pet. 

The description had fit me perfectly. So I applied under the headline of 'There's nothing left to lose.' 

If I can contribute to the creation of a cure, it was worth it. And it sounded better than rotting away in a hospice that I couldn't even afford. 

I should have been suspicious, but I was told it's basic protocol, when we were taken by special forces from the health center, and delivered somewhere blindfolded, so we didn't know where we ended up being taken. Everything was so secretive, but we trusted them. It's our government after all. Their job is to take care of us.

There was five of us. We only met during the drive to the lab. Then we got separated and each of us got our new clothes, everything personal had to be left behind. An armed soldier got assigned to every patient, and led us to our rooms in five different corners of the building. We didn't see each other after that. But we could hear the others very well. 

After the first, distant screams and crying, I couldn't shake off the feeling that something terrible is going to happen. And that it will come with more pain that I can bear. 

I got shaken every time when I heard footsteps approaching, but they only delivered food and water five times a day. I was treated like a princess, to be honest. I had everything I asked for. I only had to tell them what movies I wanted to watch and they granted it on my TV. Whatever books I asked for was delivered with my next meal. I even got colorful paper to make origami. I wasn't allowed to leave my room and didn't get access to internet though, but it didn't surprise me. What would be the point of secrecy if I can contact the outer world?

Every day, twice at the exact same time, whatever I was doing in my room was interrupted by the TV turning on or changing channel, airing our meditation. We had to practice deliberately focusing our minds. They never told us why. I kind of enjoyed this part of the day, or night. I lost sense of time without seeing daylight. 

I got quite used to the screams, too. Sometimes they stopped and a couple of days later started again, but they sounded like they came from a different person. This went on for weeks, or months. I couldn't tell. 

The last time the screams silenced, I heard footsteps in an unusual time. I know it wasn't time for dinner yet. I got used to be punctually fed so much, my stomach would signal perfectly on time, and I wasn't hungry yet.

The door opened, and my assigned soldier with his usual emotionless, robot-like expression stepped in with a nurse behind him. She gave me a shot in my upper right arm, and suddenly my head felt so heavy I couldn't hold it up. 

I woke up to the sound of metallic clinging. I was blinded by the sharp white light reflecting from the silver colored furniture, weird tools and machines around me. I tried to lift my arm to cover my eyes, but they wouldn't move. 

For some reason, I didn't panic. A masked face entered the picture and told me to focus on the breathing I practiced during the meditations. I did as he told me. Though, I wasn't sure he actually talked to me. It felt more like I was reading his mind. 

I felt a cold sensation rushing through my veins in my entire body, and the room turned dark again. When I woke up, I was back in my room. But something felt weird. Something changed but I couldn't really put my finger on it. But then I did. 

I put my finger on it. I had this habit to place my right hand over my sternum whenever I was concerned about something. And there it was, right under my fingertips. 

I sensed something though and bulging, with an enigmatic amber light beaming through my cotton shirt as I looked down. I took it off to see what it is.

A crystal woven into my chest, its light pulsing as my heart pumped behind it. I placed my hand over it, but the door unlocked, and the soldier entered again. This time, a doctor behind him. 

They never talked to us, but somehow I knew everything he was thinking of. Or rather, it felt like everything he thought of appeared in my own head like a thought of mine.

I knew it was me. The one they were looking for. 

It felt like I knew everything there was to know at this moment. The latent power of the crystal was awakening as it formed deeper connection with my body, and amplified my senses.

I knew the crystal beaming in my chest was called "The Seed", and it was only a fragment of the single piece of the precious stone they have found, and used its pieces to merge them into the five of us.

I knew the entire history of this crystal though I never heard of it before. As it became the part of me, I became the part of the Seed and attuned to its infinite well of knowledge.

I knew it was used by an ancient civilization who prepared to a cataclysmic event by encoding their knowledge and traditions inside this crystal. 

I knew that the Seed either works as a communicator or a healer, and that one has to be fit for either, or they won't be able to bare the powers that come with obtaining it. It can't be determined beforehand if someone's gonna fit, or the why's and how's or which quality they will gain. 

I knew the doctor was aware of this, but my guard wasn't. I knew the scientists were never looking for a cure of cancer. They were looking for a cure of mortality, and that nobody acquired the healing qualities so far.

I knew I wasn't the first to wear this fragment in my body, but the first who didn't get destroyed by it. And I knew that somehow I obtained both qualities, that's why I felt one with everything and everyone who entered the room, and why my cells perfectly cured themselves from the disease that was eating me. 

I knew I was immortal, and the doctor was here to find out what is exactly going on inside me. If only he knew…

I also knew what all the scientists ignored. The one thing the ancients warned about and they didn't listen. 

The price of immortality. 

I understood why we needed to practice the meditations. The energy of the crystal seemed to be very focused and directional. We needed to connect with it and be able to guide its energies.

These people were trying to recover the lost science and knowledge of Lemuria and Atlantis. They've done great research and built advanced technology, but did this all very carelessly. We were warned about the consequences for a reason.

Channeling the power of the Seed into the human body, hence transcending the boundaries of our world can be dangerous, as they've seen it happening to the others. Yet they didn't care. For them, we were just objects they were experimenting on. We were expendable for them, so they could live forever.

But I knew something else, too. The Seed doesn't only give, it also takes. Connecting with such ancient energies, interfering with existence and universal laws come with a great price. And these people had no idea that they broke the balance in our world. 

Those glorious civilizations before us all fell into ruins. They have read all the surviving manuscripts, yet never asked a quintessential, but simple question - why?

When we take from the essence of life, we have to trade what's most important for us. And they chose me for this role -  to be the vessel of the divine Seed in the quest of defying death. I was here to pay for their greed.

When I volunteered, I had nothing left to lose. All I wanted was to make the world a better place, and help those who were walking in my shoes to be able to have a life again. I signed up to sacrifice my life for this.

So I turned to the person in the mask, and ask him:

"Do you know what was the most important thing for me?"